Are dwarf dreadnoughts slow in early game or am I playing them wrong?

[BaronWilhelm]

I can't seem to keep any of their early units alive for long despite the race summary saying they are the strongest, and auto resolve is even worse with casualties. this is making me waste a lot of time re-recruiting when I'd rather be making structures. Are dreadnoughts just slow to build momentum as dwarfs? It's the only nation type and race combination I've struggled with so far.

[pipo.p]

Hello, I would suspect that the problem you describe is not linked to the fact of being a Dreadnought. What kind of hero did you recruit? For the very first battles, besides basic exploration, don't split your army, and focus on resource sites inside your domain. Remember that you can flee a combat or make wounded units flee a combat.

[sandman25dcsss]

I recently played this combo a d I agree that they are slow. Lack of healing (except on support), slow units, expensive racial and class units, lack of convert, lack of summons (except suicide scout).

[BaronWilhelm]

Originally posted by sandman25dcsss:

I recently played this combo a d I agree that they are slow. Lack of healing (except on support), slow units, expensive racial and class units, lack of convert, lack of summons (except suicide scout).

Right? and I find the dwarven auto resolve to be generally ruthless compared to every other race.

Originally posted by pipo.p:

Hello, I would suspect that the problem you describe is not linked to the fact of being a Dreadnought. What kind of hero did you recruit? For the very first battles, besides basic exploration, don't split your army, and focus on resource sites inside your domain. Remember that you can flee a combat or make wounded units flee a combat.

I'm playing as a dreadnought, referring to my dreadnought hero will full army of T 1-2's. They seem in general to have awful survivability and healing per turn, with the AI having a massive penchant for gang banging the heck out of engineers, musketeers and golems. I purposely keep engineers in the back, only to watch units do their best circumvent my whole army to attempt to encircle them, it's wild.

I've never seen the AI focus so hard on taking down specialists for any other nation style, nor have I seen specialists in any other race die so frequently in auto resolves. I assume it's because their ranged dmg potential gives them high priority as targets, but still. such a high casualty rate even taking resources and exploring dungeons, fighting independents when compared to all my other playthroughs. should I just invest everything I can into having mechanized armies?

[sandman25dcsss]

Engineers are a trap especially for dwarves, they are very bad without machines to reload, just rush to musketeers.

[pipo.p]

Originally posted by BaronWilhelm:

I'm playing as a dreadnought, referring to my dreadnought hero will full army of T 1-2's. They seem in general to have awful survivability and healing per turn, with the AI having a massive penchant for gang banging the heck out of engineers, musketeers and golems. I purposely keep engineers in the back, only to watch units do their best circumvent my whole army to attempt to encircle them, it's wild.

I've never seen the AI focus so hard on taking down specialists for any other nation style, nor have I seen specialists in any other race die so frequently in auto resolves.

So you play with both a Dreadnought leader and a Dreadnought hero? You could try a hero with healing skills.

Last time I played as a Dreadnought, I too noticed that my engineers where targeted by the A.I., but playing only manual, I could exploit this (it remembers me about nymphs, swashbucklers and ballistas, back to AoW2). Engineers are quite cheap, but the problem is to take the loss into consideration early enough. Sometimes, I would come short of engineers after a few battles, and had to wait for reinforcements to come to the front line. Later, when you have cannons, the combo engineer + cannon is very potent (I had a stack of so-called artillery: 3 engies + 3 cannons).

[Iguana-on-a-stick]

1] Yes, the dreadnought is a slow starting class. Compared to classes like Archdruid (summons!) or even Warlord (getting Berserkers is pretty easy) it will take a long while before your army really starts to shine.

You have to research cannons, essentially. Engineers are support, Musketeers are useful but spamming them is a bad idea, Golems are too hard to keep repaired. But cannons are the game changer.

2] No, Dwarfs should not be losing many units in the early game. They ARE the toughest and their racial units are extremely good at staying alive.

Two things are probably at play here: You are not being conservative enough with your troops, and the problem is getting worse because this means you're not levelling units.

In tactical battles you can minimise or eliminate casualties completely if you make sure you don't stick units in exposed spots. Draw the enemy towards your line, make sure that vulnerable units can't be flanked, soak up the attacks of powerful-hard-hitting enemies by attacking them with meat-shield units, and make sure you have plenty of healing.

For Dwarfs, you want to get Axemen (defensive strike is amazing) and Forge Priests. (They heal, they shoot, and they're armoured, making them the only priest-class unit that benefits from Dreadnought upgrades.)

That said, Engineers are definitely the exception to this rule. They are the single most squishy unit in the game, not stat-wise but because the AI prioritises them so heavily. Keeping them alive long enough for them to earn gold medals and learn repair machine is a mini-game in its own right.

Like I said above, you should probably focus on armoured class units instead of early racial units. Some axemen, musketeers and forge priests will do much better than musketeers, engineers and golems.

Then, in the late game, you can build cannons and flame tanks and juggernauts and back them up with engineers and blast all before you. Add Firstborn if you need front-liners.

Also, look for and grab all the Crystal Trees you can find. They let you build upgraded armour for all your armoured units, which is... everything you have except the Cannon. Flowrock Quarries are the second priority, they give a hitpoint boost to machines.

[pipo.p]

And then , chose Meteor armour as a Racial Governance upgrade. Amen.

[Iguana-on-a-stick]

Meteor armour is great.

But a dreadnought often can't really use it.

Late game, you often end up fielding far more Flame Tanks and Juggernauts than actual Dwarf units, and they don't benefit.

Sure helps keep the Engineers alive, though. Also nice for Firstborn.

[Fulano]

I always end up with the flame tank/firstborn/destabilize mana core combo.

But before getting there, I usually rush for musketeers, calvary, and support units before doing any heavy conquering of neutrals. Side Arms makes a huge benefit for those calvary units.

As soon as I can get golems and build some repair artifacts is when I'll start diving into the harder stuff and do most of my conquering from there.

And ya, auto battle is useless at keeping units alive, I usually only do it with T3+ units because the AI is an expert at loosing units. Once I get some good spells researched it can surprised me with good tactics in hard battles, but usually I do significantly better manual-battling.

Edit:
Oh right, I did forget the Axmen that Iguana on a stick mentioned. The defensive strike does wonders in keeping them alive.

[★ Spaceflash ★]

(this is gonna be a long one) Yeah Dreadnought is a pretty slow starting class, which is their biggest weakpoint. Like Iguana-on-a-stick mentioned it´s the cannons that make the Dreanought really dangerous and if you are able to keep your Engineers alive long enough they can become a huge asset for your war machinery.
Regarding actual gameplay, I as a dreadnought veteran can only recommend to take the early game cautiosly and I would in general manual combat almost all battles at the start of the game, often even in the mid-game. Regarding the class units, some advice I got for you:

Spy Drones (and destabilized mana core): Very cheap with 30 casting points but a pretty lousy scout. Their best trait is the explosive death that allows you to just suicide run them into enemy potions (alternativly use them as bait so the enemy targets them and not your actual main army). Since they are so cheap a couple spy drones + destabilised mana core is a pretty fun combination as well - i won many sieges by just parking 2-3 spy drones waay outside the enemy wall and cast destabilised mana core. Once the bomb detonates all enemies are dead and i move in with another spydrone i kept out of the fight, capturing the city. Works best against the independants, since they cant attempt do disjunct it. Sam tactic can work in open-field battles - send in the spydrones, cast destabilized mana core, watch the explosion and mop up any surviving units with your actual army, which you kept out of the fight.

Engineers: Yeah they can be a pain in the butt to keep alive - keep them behind cover and outside the enemy`s reach. I only start bothering with engineers once I got access to cannons.

Musketeers: I used to underestiamte these guys! they cant repalce melee brawlers, but they are SO good if your racial melee units suck, since that musket shot can one-shot many tier 1/tier 2 units (with a crit even tier 3 units). I would recommend 1-2 of these guys in each of your army (except late-game artillery stacks).

Golems: Unless you are playing halflings pretty much useless, since the lack of natural HP regeneration and the inability to heal them without gold-ranked engineers, dreadnought heroes or specific items are devastating for a melee unit.

Cannons: See above. The damage output is insane and since they dont have a long-range penalty you can just sit back and bombard the enemy from afar (bonus points if you use rapid reload of engineers/dreadnought heroes on them).

Flame Tanks: Good against anything that isnt fire proof or has a lot of fire protection. You can wipe out entire armies with one of those if it crits.

Juggernaut: I use them similar to cannons, just a bit more offensive since they can tank quite a lot of hits and that fire broadside deals an insane amount of damage. You can also just shoot the enemy down from their walls - those things wont help them at this point.

Ironclad: pretty much the Juggernaut of the seas, this thing tears apart any embarked unit and warship.

If you want an even more detailed description of each unit feel free to check my steam guide "classes and their units". And if you need some1 for a co-op match (not pvp, i hate that) feel free to add me. Hope this helped!